Is It Memorial Day Already?

Fire up the grill!

My wife and I met over Memorial Day weekend in 2007, specifically Saturday, May 26, so our relationship is now 19 years old and just a couple years away from legally enjoying a toast to itself. That weekend, a young Sen. Barack Obama was campaigning for president. It’s hard to say what would’ve been considered more implausible for 2008: That Obama would win the Democratic Party nomination and then the presidency or that I’d get engaged.

The big Memorial Day weekend movie that year was Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, which I would not have bothered seeing in the theaters, despite my affection for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. Instead, earlier in the week, I’d seen Liev Schreiber in Talk Radio on Broadway. I now realize that I’d also seen Sebastian Stan (Bucky from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the less heroic Donald Trump from The Apprentice). Here’s the very young Stan on opening night with Schreiber and Stephanie March (Law & Order: SVU).

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The first Broadway show my wife and I saw together was Grey Gardens before it closed in July 2007. No, I didn’t wait a couple months until letting my wife know I was weird. She’d already figured that out. Here’s some footage of the wonderful Rachel York and Betty Buckley in a 2016 production of the show.

Memorial Day is when we remember those who died in active military service. It’s a noble rationale for what has become the unofficial beginning of summer in the United States, even here in Portland, Oregon, where the forecast calls for scattered showers and a high in the 60s. I’m still grilling, though. I’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest for almost 15 years now, so rain no longer sends me indoors.

Five years ago, President Joe Biden gave the all-clear for Memorial Day gatherings with family and friends. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention even said you didn’t need to wear a mask if you were fully vaccinated. Happy days were here again. Then the Delta Variant arrived and mask mandates returned — although most Americans outside of major cities ignored them. Still, we were all pretty optimistic on Memorial Day 2021. Donald Trump was banned from Facebook and Twitter, which was its name at the time, and the media mocked his “glorified blog” where he was reduced to sharing his deranged rants.

I was so pumped on Memorial Day 2021, I made Alison Roman’s pasta salad to celebrate. She put capers in the motherfucker. It was truly the “salad of summer.” (Watch below.)

If you’re grilling up burgers today, consider this recipe from J. Kenji López-Alt. I’m personally going to spend some of my Saturday cleaning my smoker for the summer and then turning it loose on a large, delicious brisket.

Yes, gas is expensive and life is insane, but that’s no reason not to enjoy yourself. Fortunately, summer cocktail season has also arrived, and I’m excited to try the Enzoni, which combines muddled green grapes with gin, Campari and lemon juice. I will probably skip the simple syrup, as the grapes will make the drink sweet enough on their own. YouTube mixologist Anders Erickson shows you how to make the Enzoni and two other “porch pounders.” (Watch below.)